# How will history see the climate change denialists? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 20, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259 "2018-10-20T20:02:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/41 "2018-10-22T03:18:51Z")
“Deniers” are not legitimately denying anything. They are simply lying, intentionally and maliciously. They don’t believe their own bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/42 "2018-10-22T03:46:31Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I get somewhat annoyed about the “how will history judge us” or “we need to be on the right side of history” comments, nothing personal to the OP. > > We seem to be our own judge of history as of the year 2018 and project our own values to all future peoples. Who’s to say that in the year 2525 that people will look back and see how silly it was to worry about climate change, when the CO2 Exchanger was invented in 2050 and solved the problem. And I get annoyed by people who have zero understanding of the science but make ridiculous nonsensical proclamations anyway, like “we don’t understand enough” or Trump’s “climate change is a Chinese hoax”, James Inhofe’s “only God can change the climate”, or Trump’s more recent “the climate will change back again”. Or hypothesizing fantastical imaginary inventions that will fix everything all up. We can’t predict what we may or may not invent in the future, but we _ **can** _ say that the 37 billion tons of CO2 the world emits every year is no small matter and is not going to be fixed by someone’s backyard invention, not to mention the accumulated billions of tons already in the air for the long term. The radiative forcing of greenhouse gases is not a “value” that we “project”, it’s an established scientific fact. The destruction wrought by severe weather, floods, and droughts and the large-scale decimation of food crops aren’t “values” either; those are very bad things in any culture. We need to be guided by scientific facts and plausible scenarios, not by scientific illiterates who don’t know the facts and partisan lunatics who lie about them. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/43 "2018-10-22T03:56:05Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > And I get annoyed by people who have zero understanding of the science but make ridiculous nonsensical proclamations anyway, like “we don’t understand enough” or Trump’s “climate change is a Chinese hoax”, James Inhofe’s “only God can change the climate”, or Trump’s more recent “the climate will change back again”. > > Or hypothesizing fantastical imaginary inventions that will fix everything all up. We can’t predict what we may or may not invent in the future, but we _ **can** _ say that the 37 billion tons of CO2 the world emits every year is no small matter and is not going to be fixed by someone’s backyard invention, not to mention the accumulated billions of tons already in the air for the long term. > > The radiative forcing of greenhouse gases is not a “value” that we “project”, it’s an established scientific fact. The destruction wrought by severe weather, floods, and droughts and the large-scale decimation of food crops aren’t “values” either; those are very bad things in any culture. We need to be guided by scientific facts and plausible scenarios, not by scientific illiterates who don’t know the facts and partisan lunatics who lie about them. This is not the Let’s Debate Climate Change thread. That thread is down the hall, second door on the right. It is the How will history see thread. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/44 "2018-10-22T04:00:45Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I get somewhat annoyed about the “how will history judge us” or “we need to be on the right side of history” comments, nothing personal to the OP. > > We seem to be our own judge of history as of the year 2018 and project our own values to all future peoples. Who’s to say that in the year 2525 that people will look back and see how silly it was to worry about climate change, when the CO2 Exchanger was invented in 2050 and solved the problem. History has shown that that will not solved by the ones denying that there is a problem. Also: many of the ones telling us not to do anything are not willing to pay a dime for solutions like that, and on top of everything they disparage now the very same scientists that would be working on that solution in the future. > [@UltraVires](#): > > Plus, according to 2525 morals, segregation was shown to be absolutely the way to go. But enough about reminding posters that many of the climate change deniers are also creationists that also dislike people with different skin tones. > [@UltraVires](#): > > Couldn’t people in Virginia in 1927 look at people in 1867 and say that their ideals about equality for the black race were wrong and our new enlightened sterilization and segregation laws have shown that society is better now? > > I’m sort of joking about the last two, but it illustrates my point. Nobody in 1518 could predict how we would think in 2018 and we cannot either. What frame of history are we talking about? How about now? When we already do know enough that we should do more efforts to prevent worse scenarios? [QUOTE] It's true that Earth's a massive jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces intricately fitting together. But, Richard Alley argues, we already know enough to see the Big Picture. The missing pieces of scientific understanding - exactly how clouds work, how extreme weather will change with global warming - are important, but we can already see how Earth works. [/QUOTE] -From _ **Republican** _ scientist Richard Alley. BTW, I did teach history on a past temp position and my background is in social studies and technology, knowing that we have items that are more likely to take place, such as the raising of the oceans, it follows that there will be displacements of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of peoples thanks to that ocean rise. Such displacements in the past (not due to climate but warfare) were not happy occasions nor they were cheap. > **[Rising seas could result in 2 billion refugees by 2100 | Cornell Chronicle](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/06/rising-seas-could-result-2-billion-refugees-2100)** > > In the year 2100, more than 2 billion people - those who live on islands or along coasts - could become climate change refugees due to rising sea levels, according to Cornell researchers. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/45 "2018-10-22T04:15:25Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > This is not the Let’s Debate Climate Change thread. That thread is down the hall, second door on the right. It is the How will history see thread. I’m addressing the history aspect. “Facts” are not “values” and this distinction means that history will see denialists as dangerous obstructionists who delayed vital and time-critical progress in mitigating the world’s most serious problem. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/46 "2018-10-22T04:24:40Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > This is not the Let’s Debate Climate Change thread. That thread is down the hall, second door on the right. It is the How will history see thread. Turns out that if that is the case, then I’m just under the position of principal of the school. 🙂 Looking at history, what is bound to happen is to see the corporations that funded denial to cut their support to yahoos like Soon and other misleaders. Those corporations then will use the government to insulate themselves from liability in exchange of supporting efforts to control emissions, while they will continue to extract oil and coal… What? Did you think that was going to stop? For the tobacco producers, a lot of that nicotine they also make is going now into vaping, for the fossil material producers of the future a lot of what they are doing now is really wasteful indeed. It is just that in the future many will really wonder what they were smoking in the past when they thought that it was a good idea to burn and dump a lot of that carbon into the atmosphere instead of using all that carbon for the coming nano tube and diamond age. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/47 "2018-10-22T04:28:01Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I get somewhat annoyed about the “how will history judge us” or “we need to be on the right side of history” comments, nothing personal to the OP. Given that you’re a republican/conservative, this does not surprise me at all. History has been _exceedingly_ unkind to conservatives recently. > [@](#): > > We seem to be our own judge of history as of the year 2018 and project our own values to all future peoples. Who’s to say that in the year 2525 that people will look back and see how silly it was to worry about climate change, when the CO2 Exchanger was invented in 2050 and solved the problem. “Best case scenario, some futuristic technology we currently are expending next to no effort in developing might save us from this very difficult problem, thus rendering our concerns meaningless”? Good news, guess I can keep eating double cheeseburgers every day for lunch, because _probably_ we’ll come up with some solution to obesity before my heart gives out. > [@](#): > > I’m sort of joking about the last two, but it illustrates my point. Nobody in 1518 could predict how we would think in 2018 and we cannot either. What frame of history are we talking about? Well, given the current evidence, within _my lifetime_, we’re facing incredibly widespread destruction. Within _my lifetime_, we will be facing extreme consequences from the lying denialists currently in congress and the white house. Not their lifetimes, sadly, but my life time, almost certainly (assuming I lay off the double cheeseburgers). Moral change quickly. They don’t change _that_ quickly when it comes to things like “causing incredible death and destruction by denying and obfuscating clear scientific evidence”. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/48 "2018-10-22T05:21:35Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > The fact that climate change is a serious threat to humanity has been clear since, at the _absolute_ latest, the early 2000s. But [given the context of the latest IPCC report](https://physicsworld.com/a/ipccs-climate-report-the-futures-not-looking-good/), we’re out of time to avert disaster. We need to drastically change things _right now_, or it’s too late to avoid massive consequences from global warming. > > And, obviously, that’s just not happening… (post shortened) The IPCC began it’s campaign in 1988. What the man-made-CO2-is-evil side doesn’t seem to be able to do is CONVINCE enough voters that their story is believable. Back when clean air, and clean water, were major issues, advocates were able to actually CONVINCE people to support their cause. FYI - If you can’t CONVINCE sufficient numbers of people to support your cause du jour, you need to figure out what you are doing wrong? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/49 "2018-10-22T05:32:21Z")
Since innovation and capitalism have caused climate related deaths to plunge to record lows never seen in the history of mankind, I doubt that the climate changing will have much of an impact on history. That said, the period of capitalist prosperity has not been covered honestly by pop-history so maybe there should be no assumption of integrity. ---
**Author:** ![namahoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/77aa72/32.png) [@namahoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/namahoo)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/50 "2018-10-22T06:45:36Z")
The “Cecil Adams” of 2006 went with it don’t matter, it’s all economic growth to me, let’s wait till there’s no more fossil fuel to burn. Fighting ignorance and not rocking the boat since 1973. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/51 "2018-10-22T06:53:52Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > “Deniers” are not legitimately denying anything. They are simply lying, intentionally and maliciously. They don’t believe their own bullshit. There’s a lot of science illiteracy out there _particularly_ among politicians in the US. Stuff like bringing a snowball into congress is so dumb it’s clear they have fuck all understanding. Now, that’s still despicable in my view: they’re cashing the cheques while making no effort (indeed: making an effort to _avoid_) understanding something that’s a massive threat to all humanity\*. But it’s not lying per se. - I sometimes say that to Trump supporters: “_Even if_ you think Trump is right about climate change being a hoax, it’s clear he’s never really studied the topic, right? All that stuff about spraying hairspray in his house…he has not bothered to read one paragraph on the science, which shows a callous disregard for humans and the planet, correct?” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/52 "2018-10-22T07:00:44Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > (post shortened) > > The IPCC began it’s campaign in 1988. > > What the man-made-CO2-is-evil side doesn’t seem to be able to do is CONVINCE enough voters that their story is believable. Back when clean air, and clean water, were major issues, advocates were able to actually CONVINCE people to support their cause. FYI - If you can’t CONVINCE sufficient numbers of people to support your cause du jour, you need to figure out what you are doing wrong? Same thing the scientists and good policy makers did against tobacco smoking, they did nothing wrong, but the industry and the politicians getting money from the bad leaders of industry prevented and prevent progress. So, as usual, time to vote and throw the rascals out. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/53 "2018-10-22T07:19:04Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > (post shortened) > > The IPCC began it’s campaign in 1988. > > What the man-made-CO2-is-evil side doesn’t seem to be able to do is CONVINCE enough voters that their story is believable. Back when clean air, and clean water, were major issues, advocates were able to actually CONVINCE people to support their cause. FYI - If you can’t CONVINCE sufficient numbers of people to support your cause du jour, you need to figure out what you are doing wrong? It’s pretty obvious what’s wrong - there’s an extremely well-funded propaganda campaign that has completely coopted half of American politics. Denialists have succeeded in turning climate change into a partisan issue, and thanks to the breakdown in trust in nonpartisan institutions and the way media bubbles have taken over, the vast majority of the time that those on the right hear about climate change at all, it will be people downplaying or denying the issue. Just to put this in context, a study of three major networks in 2013 found that [Fox News’s coverage of climate change was misleading 72% of the time](https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/Science-or-Spin-report.pdf). A similar study from 2009 found that frequent viewership of Fox News was [directly correlated with being wrong on climate change](https://woodsinstitute.stanford.edu/system/files/publications/Global-Warming-Fox-News.pdf). This is why I explicitly excuse the rank and file here. Uncle Cletus is certainly misinformed about climate change and voting for people who will make things worse, but there’s a huge ethical difference between falling for a propaganda campaign and _creating_ a propaganda campaign. We know why climate outreach is failing. The better question, given that you’re here and have access to all the information, is this: what the fuck is _your_ excuse? Forget everyone else; _you_ are aware of the facts and yet still willing to be wrong. Why? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/54 "2018-10-22T14:15:17Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I get somewhat annoyed about the “how will history judge us” or “we need to be on the right side of history” comments, nothing personal to the OP. > > We seem to be our own judge of history as of the year 2018 and project our own values to all future peoples. Who’s to say that in the year 2525 that people will look back and see how silly it was to worry about climate change, when the CO2 Exchanger was invented in 2050 and solved the problem. Plus, according to 2525 morals, segregation was shown to be absolutely the way to go. Really? Do you think it was silly for people in the first half of the 20th century to worry about polio since a vaccine was invented in 1955? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/55 "2018-10-22T16:43:51Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > What does this mean here? Is it supposed to be per MWh? No. They bid on power. E.g, we need frequency increased; how hard can you push? IIRC there is also a specified time period. So yes there’s going to be some amount of energy used, but it will vary. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/56 "2018-10-22T17:13:03Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > We don’t really have to cut back, we just need to be smarter. Cars get far better gas millage than they did in the 70’s, and they are getting even better. We don’t need to drive fewer miles if we can produce less CO[sub]2[/sub] per mile. Cars/transportation are around a quarter of our overall energy use. Not trivial, but not the biggest contributor. Of course, if electrics were to catch on bigly, that fraction would probably be halved. Home, commercial and industrial are much bigger aggregate uses. > [@](#): > > Development of nuclear is probably the only realistic way of accommodating our desire to consume more and more energy intensive goods and services, while not ruining our planet. Very few are going to listen to greenpeace and cut back on their carbon footprint voluntarily, not enough to do any good. But even fewer will care much if the energy that produces and powers their Iphone comes from solar, wind, nuclear, or coal. Funny thing I just read, one of the obstacles to building reactors in the US is that we have to import the cores because _no one in the US can build them_. How fucked up is that? I can hear Pris saying to Roy Batty, “_then we’re stupid and we’ll die_.” If we cannot keep up with what we started because it is too much trouble, we deserve to fail. > [@](#): > > There are some promising developments in the world of fusion that may make most of this irrelevant anyway. If someone develops a practical electricity producing fusion plant, then pretty much all our problems are solved. Yeah, fission was going to give us power “too cheap to meter”. Forgive me for being a tad skeptical about the promise of fusion. Lockheed has patented their CFR design and claimed they will have a full scale net-positive prototype within months of now. I guess we shall soon see how that plays out. It would be sadly ironic if fusion could be done on a practical scale but became all ensnared in IP issues. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/57 "2018-10-22T17:28:25Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Cars/transportation are around a quarter of our overall energy use. Not trivial, but not the biggest contributor. I’m curious where you’re drawing your boxes: [https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy\_US\_2017.png](https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy_US_2017.png) > **[Energy Literacy](http://energyliteracy.com/)** ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/58 "2018-10-22T17:49:22Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > We know why climate outreach is failing. The better question, given that you’re here and have access to all the information, is this: what the fuck is _your_ excuse? Forget everyone else; _you_ are aware of the facts and yet still willing to be wrong. Why? (post shortened) My excuse? I firmly believe that global warming is occurring. OTOH, I find the IPCC and UN efforts, and your OP, to be unconvincing. Has the MMCO2IE side finally settled on the expected level of sea rise after all of the glaciers, and poles, have melted? Is it 0.5m? 1m? 2m? 20m? With all of the “science” currently available, something like that would be both easy to prove, and to sell. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/59 "2018-10-22T18:08:21Z")
Would it help if I brought out a scatter graph featuring the most recent research estimates? Would you care? Because the answer to your question is literally just a short google search away, if you actually cared to find out. Seriously, just give your question into google and you will quickly find your answer. You’ll find the scientific papers measuring land ice volume, you’ll find papers determining how much this would cause the sea level to rise, and you’ll find popsci sites which summarize the information in case you’re not an expert capable of reading and understanding the papers. (The answers I found to your question fall in the 60-70m range, lest you accuse me of dodging the question. And it’s a very silly question, as no scientist is predicting that this will hapoen soon, or at all.) But do you care? Past experience tells me “probably not”. The reason why it’s a hard sell is entirely because of denialist spreading as much doubt and obfuscation as they can, and people lapping that up as though it was some meaningful rebuttal to the actual science. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259/60 "2018-10-22T18:12:07Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > (post shortened) > > My excuse? I firmly believe that global warming is occurring. OTOH, I find the IPCC and UN efforts, and your OP, to be unconvincing. > > Has the MMCO2IE side finally settled on the expected level of sea rise after all of the glaciers, and poles, have melted? Is it 0.5m? 1m? 2m? 20m? With all of the “science” currently available, something like that would be both easy to prove, and to sell. Explained and linked to this before, many times in the past: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VNgqv4yVyDw/hqdefault.jpg "28 - The consequences of climate change (in our lifetimes)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNgqv4yVyDw&t=299) > [@](#): > > With a hundred fifty cubic miles of this ice melting every year, basic physics tells us that this will cause sea levels to rise and basic physics also tells us that as water warms up it expands. > > So on top of the rise due to ice melt researchers say sea levels will also rise because of thermal expansion. There are two ways to calculate this: one is to estimate how much ice will melt and how much the oceans will expand for a given rise in temperature and that gives us a figure of between 0.8 and 2 meters by the end of the century depending on how much co2 is pumped into the atmosphere. Another way of estimating it is to see how much sea levels rose in the past for a given rise in temperature and that gives a similar range: between 1 and 2 meters by the end of this century. > > 0.8 meters, the low end of the estimates, may not sound like much; it’s about 3 feet. But it’s enough to submerge large areas of coastline including parts of coastal cities like Miami, New York, Calcutta and Tokyo. Hong Kong, Bangkok, New Orleans, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Two meters, the high end of the scale, is over 6 feet. > > Still the urban myths persist and who better to demonstrate them than our old friend 1000 Frawley who calls my reporting on sea-level rise “misleading tosh”. “Potties claim of a 100 centimeter rise, that’s a meter by 2100, is pure fiction based on IPCC alarmism”. Well, first of all, of course this isn’t my claim. I’m just doing what I always do in my videos **which is to report what’s published in the scientific literature.** Secondly, I don’t use the IPCC as a source… Mind you, many of those projections have the caveat that they depend also on what would happen if an acceleration on the rate of melting of the cap ice was observed; **as it is being observed** , that low end is not what we are going to get. And yes, a lot of that cap ice is still in Greenland, and is still melting a lot now, regardless of where it is located on a map. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-will-history-see-the-climate-change-denialists/823259.md?page=4)